Ummm.
Okay so I love all stories about witches and anything that ties in the witch trials so this book was very intriguing in that aspect. Its giving "forbidden love" and "Romeo and Juliette" vibes, but I did feel like the romance needed more depth to actually envelope myself into it, I think it fell pretty flat. I would have loved more tension and more "enemies to lovers" vibes, but it felt very close to insta-love. If Otto grew up hating all witches and believing they should all die, its going to take him more than two days to change those deep engrained feelings of hatred and vice versa. If my mom was just burned alive, It would be extremely difficult for me to ever have feelings for the person/people I deemed responsible for her death.

Short and Sweet Review
Fritzi is the only survivor after her coven was brutally murdered by the hexenjägers (witch hunters), and now she’s made it her mission to find her only surviving relative, her cousin Liesel. To accomplish her mission she’ll need to take down their leader, Dieter Kirch. On the other hand we have Otto who is one of the hexenjägers and Dieters second in command. Ever since the hexenjägers killed Otto’s mother he’s been planning his revenge. When Fritzi and Otto meet they’re weary of each other ones a witch and the other is a hunter but they both have a common goal.
I feel like Night of the Witch was predictable, We have Fritzi a witch teaming up with a rogue witch hunter and the villain was just weird and felt like his motive was just to be powerful and in charge. Fritzi encounters Otto and his fellow witch hunters while on the search for her cousin, which is when Fritzi becomes imprisoned herself. When the two have time alone Otto explains that he’s been working to free the other witches that are set to burn and he needs Fritzi’s help to do it. This is where things get weird because we learn how Fritzi and Dieter are connected and then Fritzi escapes with Otto and Liesel and they learn that they’ve been picked to be a Goddess’s chosen one and warrior. We also learn that there are different kind of witches, out main character Fritzi uses herbs to cast spells, while her cousin is able to control fire. I didn’t like the romance between Fritzi and Otto mainly because it felt too easy in a sense, they were supposed to be enemies but not really since Otto isn’t who he’s portraying to the world, but the romance between them felt forced and a little to instant for me. Honestly the book was slow and I think it was due to all the world building, but also the villain just seemed too predictable and the ending was ridiculous especially when you read the epilogue.
Overall, I liked that this book did have historical elements in it, but I wish there was more going on to keep my interest and hopefully in the next book there’s more action and character development. Night of the Witch was an okay book and I’m still on the fence of whether I would want to continue the series.

The premise of this book was amazing, and I really loved the idea of a book that centered around the European witch trials. From a historical standpoint, this was a really fun and interesting read.

Fritzi is a witch who lives peacefully with her coven until witch hunters destroy the coven and nearly everyone in it. Otto is a witch hunter whose motives are more pure than he would lead others to believe. Their stories intertwine when Fritzi comes to the aid of a woman she believes is being unjustly arrested by Otto.

While I did love the European witch trials and historical fantasy aspect of this book, the romance aspect fell very flat. Within a day or two of meeting Otto has serious romantic feeling for Fritzi and it takes her almost no time to reciprocate those feelings. It seemed very unrealistic given everything else going on, including Fritzi having just watched her mother be burned at the stake. It had very intsa-love vibes with no depth and it happened before it felt like there was even an opportunity for chemistry to be established between the two.

Overall, because I liked the historical fantasy elements, I gave this three stars, but the romance aspect was so poorly done that overall it really took away from the story for me.

Series Info/Source: 1st book in the Witch and Hunter series. I got an ebook of this through NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: This was okay but also had some pretty big issues for me. The most glaring issue is the insta-love between the two main characters; a witch-hunter and witch literally fall in love in less than a day. Their love drives a lot of the story which just seemed ridiculous to me. In general this whole book was pretty boring and had a lot of plot holes. Previous to reading this I had read Revis's "Across the Universe" series which I really enjoyed. I had also read Raasch's "Snow Like Ashes" series which I really enjoyed and the first books in her "Stream Raiders" and "Set Fire to the Gods" series which I really did not like.

The story alternates POV between Fritzi (a herb witch) and Otto (a captain witch-hunter). The story starts with Fritzi surviving a horrible attack from the hexenjager in which the whole witch community she lives in is destroyed. Meanwhile, Otto is trying to hatch a plan from inside the hexenjager ranks with his sister to free a lot of the witches that have been captured before a mass burning of them happens. Fritzi disrupts this plan in a big way and the two are forced to work together and trust each other.

As with the immediate "soul love" between Fritzi and Otto a lot of things don't make sense in this book. The villain in here doesn't have very good motives (or any) and I was puzzled that a goddess would "mistakenly" give Fritzi's brother these powerful gifts...I mean she pretty much lived in Fritzi and her brother's heads, how could she miss what Fritzi's brother was doing with his power?

There are a lot of weird plot points and holes in logic throughout the story that bothered me. In addition to that, the story is strangely boring and linear and just tough to stay involved in. I never really liked Otto or Fritzi much because we just aren't allowed to really get to know them as a reader. The whole book is basically a cat and mouse chase to some mysterious woods with a big baddie that is chasing them for strangely undetermined reasons.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I wasn't a fan of this book. The plot was both boring and full of plot holes. The insta-love between the two characters was horrible and never really gave us a chance to engage with and get to like the characters. I won't be reading anymore in this series. Given my experiences with all of Raasch's novels after "Snow Like Ashes" I don't plan on picking up any more books by her. I just loved "Snow Like Ashes" so much that I keep hoping she'll deliver on another series. This is the third series by her that I have started since "Snow Like Ashes" and it's just as big of a miss for me as the other two were.

This book had me enthralled from start to finish! I loved the German setting and culture. The villain was really someone that you loved to hate and rooted for Fritzi to defeat. Oh, but that ending - what a twist! Definitely looking forward to seeing what else these authors have in store.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the advanced copy of this book!

Witch vs witch hunters mixed with historical fiction in this new YA novel set during the famous witch trials in Trier, Germany during the 16th century. This book includes a lot of cool historical elements about the real life witch trials and then embellishes them with real witches. Fritzi and Otto are adorable and I can't wait for more of them in the sequel. The book sets up a sequel nicely and gives us room to grow with the Forest Folk and goddesses. There are scenes that describe torture and burning, but I didn't find them overly gory.

Night of the Witch was interesting and enjoyable to read. The setting of the witch trials and the landscape of Germany was very well crafted. The fantasy aspect of the story was also good. However, the villain should have been more worked upon. Overall, a nice read.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

This is a fictitious and fantastical tale that takes a look at the witch trials in Germany. My favorite aspects of this book were the rich descriptions of Germany and the fascinating information about history.

However, this tale left me wanting more from the characters. While this was so interesting, I still found myself not completely pulled into the story at many points. At times, I was losing interest.

I still think this is worth checking out!

Out October 3, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

Thank you to netgalley for the arc! 🙏 I am full of thoughts about this! This is a very unique telling of the European witch trials, it is very fast paced, decent world-building, the characters likable and for those reasons, I have allowed three stars. However, despite the fast pace, I often felt like I could fall asleep; it can feel terribly dull. And yet I was jerked awake constantly by the VIOLET purple prose.

1. This is an extremely overwritten book. An example is they introduced the head witch hunter and “everything about him screams strength and power.” That kind of writing makes me grind my teeth. I need more Daniel Day-Lewis, less Nicolas Cage, as fun as Nicolas Cage is. Prose like that drives a reader with taste absolutely bananas. Also there’s a great deal of telling not showing.

2. Wow, the action is nonstop! And I do credit the writers, for never leaving us in a duller chapter, but in so many ways the reader is going to be bored, because the characters feel quite caricatured. Even though they are likable, not a tremendous amount is built into the characters development, so that when they are in life-threatening circumstances, the reader (me) can feel almost ambivalent. Like why should we care?

3. Romance is nothing to write home about. The female main character is 18 and the male main character is 19, so a lot of this reads like young adult. I’m not sure how they want to market this yet, but the cover of the book, which is extremely beautiful, has a bit of a KU romantasy vibe to it, and I think those types of readers will not find that same vibe in this book. Also? there is a shoehorned in sex scene that feels uncomfortable to read because, while they are no longer minors, they are very young people. I don’t know. Didn’t necessarily give me nausea, but I didn’t love it. Also, I better not see this book as described as enemies to lovers because while they are a witch and a witch hunter, they are only enemies for about a third of the book. And also, SMALL SPOILER: he is like a secret agent witchhunter that doesn’t want the burnings/trials to happen and he’s working on a secret plan to combat all of this horrible patriarchal genocide. So… the ETL of it all falls flat.

If I had read this book when I was 16, I think I would’ve loved it! Even though there is a short sex scene, I feel like this is the type of book that should be marketed to young adult readers. And I say that as a lover of YA fantasy!! But there are a lot of books in the genre that are just not that great of a read, but a teenage reader can still appreciate the qualities in it! If you read this genre and you are an adult, you know what I’m talking about. There are YA fantasy books that speak to readers on every type of level, whether they are 16 or 36. But then there are YA fantasy books that really only work if you were a teenager, and this is one of them.

I'm a big fan of Beth Revis but I wasn't really into this one. The pacing was all over the place and the characters were inconsistent. I was honestly disappointed.

The world is interesting in concept: it's a fantasy retelling of 1570s Germany, where the war on witches is more violent. The church has a corps of hexenjägers who are armed to the teeth to bring down witches (though most of the hexenjägers seem aware that witches are not actually real, and it just keeps women from being too independent.) I liked the use of real historical facts in the setting, such as the women brewmasters and their pointed hats, which is where we got most of our modern witch lore today.

I think my problem was mainly the characters: Basically, Fritzi is... not the smartest. I think she's supposed to come off as caring too much and putting everyone else before her, and yes, she is naive, but it's to the point where her self-preservation just forgets to kick in. It feels more like she makes bad decisions for the sake of the plot rather than logic. And she isn't the only one: the witches and gods wave away their bad decisions in the same way. The antagonist was disappointingly one-dimensional, as flat as the page he's written on. I kept waiting for there to be some complexity to his character, but... no. Spoilers: he's evil because he's evil. He's just a psychopath and there's nothing more to it. Maybe this is also intentional: we keep hoping, like Fritzi, that there's more to it, but there isn't.

The story itself felt very rushed. This book was promoted as a slow-burn + enemies-to-lovers, and I ton't think it's either: they were enemies for maybe a day until true motivations are shown, so he was never actually the enemy. The rest of the action in the novel also didn't leave much time for things to develop.

One of my qualms though is the romance. It feels like they wanted to add 'spice' to the book because that's what sells, but it just clashes! These are two very inexperienced characters and the second things get heated, they start speaking like romance novels for people twice their age. It completely took me out of the story. Like, entirely. This is YA and it made me super uncomfortable to think of these characters suddenly acting this way!

Maybe it's a case of "It's not you, it's me", but this book wasn't my cup of tea.

Sara Raasch is one of my favorite authors and I was really looking forward to this new book. The plot sounded right up my alley and I was expecting a great enemies to lovers plot with all the witchy vibes.

Unfortunately this book fell very flat for me. The plot was easy, predictable and the magic system didn’t really seem to have any rules. There were so many things that were not explained well and it all felt very rushed.

The romance was incredibly disappointing. From the synopsis, I thought it would be enemies to lovers, but it was more like insta-love. There was no build up or tension and I would have liked more of the slow build enemies to lovers gives us. I didn’t feel much chemistry between Fritzi and Otto.

Overall I just did not enjoy the story much and could not connect with the characters. I will not be continuing this series.

Content: one open door scene (vague description)

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley for the eARC!

First, I would like to thank Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley for early access to Night of the Witch in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Second, I would like to thank the authors because omg, WOW! I loved this book!

This story felt action-packed and the tension between the two characters was scorching! Fritzi is a witch, a truly magical witch, who feels the world on her shoulders after she survives a brutal witch hunt. Her family is gone, either dead or taken, and she must do everything in her power to save those she can from the witch hunters who terrorize her country.

Otto is a witch hunter, although he doesn't believe actual witches exist. Not when his mother was burned at the stake for selfish desires that had nothing to do with witchcraft. (I loved the speculation of why so-and-so would accuse another for witchcraft.)

When Fritzi and Otto's paths collide, everything they know comes into question. Especially if they can trust one another in a desperate bid for justice, or is it vengeance?

One of my favorite things about this book is the setting and actual history that went into crafting this story. There is heavy nods to German and Celtic culture, the witch trials that came before Salem, and all the descriptions of the tasty food has me craving my favorites from my local German restaurant.

I also enjoyed the magic. There were some elements that were a little predictable, and in a few instances I was confused on how the magic was supposed to behave. But overall, I thought it was interesting and only wish there had been more magic being cast. Well, more good magic anyway.

So why four stars instead of five? I'm hoping the authors will consider putting some warnings in the beginning of the novel, because there was some graphic violence that I was not prepared for. It also felt like the ending came out of nowhere. This is more of a personal preference, but I felt like the ending was abrupt and took a weird turn, and I wanted so much more than what we got.

Regardless, this was a fantastic read and I highly recommend to anyone looking for a darker YA book with that supernatural, witchy feel.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of Night of the Witch in exchange for my honest feedback.

The premise of this book by Sara Raasch and Beth Revis checked all my reading wheelhouse items, and I was particularly intrigued in a witch-hunt story set in Germany as opposed to the more common Salem and colonies. The authors did a good job at introducing the reader to both main characters and developing them separately through their alternating points of view, however the romance between Fritzi and Otto did not resonate with me as well as I thought it would.

The book is an easy read, yet I still felt as if something was missing so I did not clamor to read through this as I initially intended. It very well could be that I am not the appropriate audience for this YA book despite having read other similar YA books. Even still, the book was atmospheric even when the pacing did not perfectly coincide.

I still will recommend this book to my younger cousins who are interested in fantasy, witch trials/hunts, and romance with some history thrown in.

I was genuinely engaged with the story. The writing was enjoyable, and the characters showed potential. However, there were few things that I didn't like. The chemistry between Fritzi and Otto felt forced. The instant romance felt unrealistic and lacked depth. Also, the plot was abit chaotic and the magical elements in the story were confusing.

I really liked the concept and the premise, I am still not sure if I will be continuing this series

I wanted more from this book than we got. The pace was both too slow and too fast. And yet nothing really happened until the last 25% or so. I thought the romance was forced and they alluded at secrets that weren't actually anything. Just overall disappointing.

Thank you to the publisher for the arc!

Why is everything in this book just a giant mess? The story is all over the place and the villian is a joke. You expect me to be scared of this person? No. A kitten is more terrifying.

"Night of the Witch" presents a captivating premise of vengeance, magic, and love in a world where witches and hunters collide. Fritzi, the determined witch seeking justice, and Otto, the hexenjäger with a hidden agenda, make for compelling protagonists in a story filled with twists and turns.

The novel excels in creating an atmosphere of suspense and intrigue, keeping readers engaged as Fritzi and Otto navigate their complex alliance. However, it falls short of a higher rating due to some pacing issues and the predictability of certain plot elements.

While the story successfully explores the themes of revenge and trust, it doesn't quite reach its full potential in terms of character development and world-building. Despite this, "Night of the Witch" is an enjoyable read for fans of supernatural romance and those who appreciate a mix of magic and vendettas in their tales. It earns a solid three stars for its intriguing premise and the sparks that fly between its conflicted leads.

If you’re looking for a witchy read for the month, you got one right here. This is written by 2 well know authors Sarah Rasch and Beth Revis. It’s a fantasy take on the witch trials in Germany and we follow Fritzi who survived an attack on her coven by witch hunters and Otto who is the leader of the witch hunters and the two of them end up working together in unusual circumstances. I liked this! It was a fun read and something of a palette cleanser for me from my more serious brutal reads.
Full review to come on YouTube

Night of the Witch
by Sara Raasch, Beth Revis
YA Fantasy Paranormal
Ages: 16+
NetGalley ARC
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
SourceBooks Fire

Fritzi is one of a few survivors of an attack on her coven by the hexenjager, witch hunters, led by Kommandant Dieter Kirch, who branded then burned those they caught.

Otto is a hexenjager, second in command to Dieter Kirch, but Otto is planning to destroy the hexenjager because they burned his innocent mother alive, and as he poses as one of them, he finds that his mother isn't the only innocent they are killing, and Dieter Kirch and those of the church know it, but don't care.

When Fritzi gets tangled up in Otto's plan, Otto is shocked to discover that witches are real and some have real power, but they are not all evil as portrayed.


Another story based around the witch-burning times that puts good against evil, and those traits are in the eye of the beholder and those with power to threaten and instill fear into others.

It wasn't a bad story, I think it was influenced by the 'Serpent and Dove' series, but it was slow, and sometimes it seemed as if it was backtracking so to give it more word count. And while the wild magic was a change, there wasn't really anything else added to the world to bring it out from the widely known shadow of the witch hunts of the past.

This is a violent story, and the descriptions, while not highly detailed, could still bother those under 16, and there is also the romantic aspect that while tame, might not be that suitable for younger readers.

While it was an okay of a read, and the cover is cool, it will be a toss-up if I pick up the second book in this series.

2 Stars

Night of the Witch follows a pretty classic witchy plotline, with two family members who must team up to defeat a witch who has become power hungry and is destroying people to fuel his power. What sets it apart is its loveable characters, action packed pages, and it's setting in 16th-century Germany. A super fun, magical read that reminded me of Alix E. Harrow's 'Once and Future Witches'. I've been in a bit of a reading slump and this has definitely broken me out of it. 4.5/5 stars!